Kavkazskaya Plennitsa or Kidnapping, Caucasian Style - 50th Anniversary!

Kavkazskaya Plennitsa or Kidnapping, Caucasian Style - 50 years of great humor!

One of the most beloved movies of the Soviet era is celebrating its 50th anniversary this 2017 year. The official and full name of the movie is Kavkazskaya Plennitsa, ili Novye Priklyucheniya Shurika. Russian to English translation of the film is Kidnapping, Caucasian Style. 

The Coward, the Fool and the Pro of Kavkazskaia Plennitsa

This is the classics for the ages. The mountains, sun, songs and jokes. The new sightseeing attractions appeared in Crimea after the shot.  

We don’t know for sure where this story took place, but some of the rumors suggest these places: Alushta, South Demerdji, Yalta, Bakhchysarai district. 

The story of the girl kidnapped by the loving dzhigit laid the foundation for the nationwide adorable comedy film. Captured by the beauty of Crimea, he organized the shooting location in preserved area “The Valley of Ghosts”. It’s all here: both the mountains and the sea.

The phrases and even the scenes from the film have been widely quoted for so long. The most famous stairs site is where “an athlete, a member of the Komsomol, and a beauty” went downstairs so gracefully. This staircase in Alushta is still called – Ninochka’s.

Yuri Nikulin scratching  from beneath the blanket

As legend has it, Gaidai gave a bottle of champagne to actors for each joke they proposed. In that scene, which was proposed by Yuri Nikulin, the heel was scratched by the director’s very hand from beneath the blanket.

Tens of Crimeans had been engaged in minor casts of the “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style”. 

Both the prosecutor’s house from where Shurik was taken to the psychiatric clinic and tovarisch Saakhov’s dacha are located in the very center of Alushta near Genoese fortress. And the militsiya department was in fact the building of the local Civil Status Registration Office (it's a place where Russian marriage certificates are issued to the newly-wed couples).

In the “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style” it was the last time when the Coward, the Fool and the Pro appeared in public together.

In 1967, the year of the film’s release, more than 70 million people had watched it – every third citizen of the Soviet Union. The film is so adorable that even fifty years after its release, the excursions in the footsteps of the “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style” are being arranged in Crimea all year round.